Sunday, 11 April 2010

As Dance in the Vampire Bund finally reaches its climax, so said finale begins by giving us a look at what Akira had seen before his memory loss that was the interest of so many parties in the last episode - A series of sights so shocking to him that it seemingly forced him to block out his own memory lest it alter his perception of Mina Tepes and his feelings towards her.

However, with these memories now restored to Akira's mind as he finds himself patched up and ready to face his current challenge once again thanks to the work of a "fangless" doctor, his loyalty to Mina still remains, as he finds himself needing to face off against someone who he believed to be an ally until this point - Mei Ren.

So, much of this episode concerns itself with this final battle, set against the backdrop of the secrets of the pair's respective "masters" and what it all means for the world of vampires as a whole. It probably goes without saying who wins the day come the end of it all, although not before we're left with enough to get out teeth in to were a second season of this show ever to appear.

While Dance in the Vampire Bund could never be considered a bad series by any stretch of the imagination, it somehow also never managed to rise above the mediocre - It had its moments, but in general terms everything that it tried to do seemed to almost have been attempted without much conviction, while also feeling like the kind of thing we've already seen countless times before. Of course, this wasn't helped by the series suffering from such a sluggish start - The first half of the show frequently threatened to stall entirely, and by the time things started picking up and SHAFT got their teeth into both the visual and story-telling requirements of the series it was almost entirely too late to do much with it, making these final episodes feel almost as rushed as the early ones were languid. Above all else this poor pacing was the final nail in Dance in the Vampire Bund's proverbial coffin, leaving us with one entirely forgettable anime that... well, I can't say anything more about - Looks like I've forgotten it already.